What can Tinder learn from a French dating app? For starters, swiping isn’t really a suitable tool for meeting people.

That’s according to Didier Rappaport, the outspoken CEO of Happn, a fast-growing mobile app best known for its ability to match users whose paths they’ve crossed.

“Frankly speaking, the swipe is an amazing invention,” Rappaport told The Post, noting that it’s great for sorting through apartment listings and holiday gifts.

“But when you apply the concept of the swipe to a human being, you transform the human being into an object.”

Well, perhaps, but Tinder boasts of more than 50 million users.

Launched in February 2014, Happn is on track for 10 million registered users worldwide by Dec. 31.

That’s a respectable number, to be sure, but just 20 percent of its larger rival.

Favored by singles looking for a second chance after a fleeting flirtation inside an elevator, perhaps, or on the subway, Happn is adding upwards of 1.3 million new users every month, and expects to reach 30 million by the end of 2016.

In New York City, Happn now has 250,000 active users — one-quarter of its US users.

Investors are especially impressed that between 55 and 60 percent of Happn’s registrants are monthly active users, and another 40 percent of those are checking the app every day.

Happn executives attribute its growth to the fact that it is different from Tinder — it’s more about relationships, they said.

“It’s not a hookup app” like Tinder, Rappaport declares.

“With our app, you do not swipe through people so easily with your hand,” he says. Instead, “you approach people, you are struck by someone, you start to talk.”

Happn’s “charm” feature, in which users can tag each others’ profiles with hearts through small in-app purchases, appears to have recently been copied by Tinder in the form of a “super like” button, Rappaport notes.